We performed a comparison between IDERA ER/Studio, SAP PowerDesigner, and UNICOM System Architect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about LeanIX, Sparx Systems, erwin by Quest and others in Enterprise Architecture Management."Valuable features include the ability to visually represent what the database tables are going to look like and their relationships. Also, the ability to document the definitions of the tables and the columns that are in a table so that we can communicate what the data is and how it should be used."
"It does the job."
"We have a database design group of about 15 people. The Repository enables multiple people to work on the same model at the same time. We have fully integrated models, so we have one model for the enterprise data warehouse, one model for MDM, with a lot of sub-models in these things. People work on different parts of the model at different times. So the repository enables us to share the models, and keep track of what everybody is working on."
"One of the valuable features is inheritance when joining tables. When setting up RI and domains and rules, ER/Studio does a lot of the grunt, boilerplate code that would otherwise have to be hand-coded."
"We use the solution to create data models which describe our company's data architecture"
"We found a lot of duplication, a lot of non-conformity in the way our databases were designed. By identifying these situations, we're able to go back in and try to create a more standardized solution."
"This application does a lot of things, as do competitor products, but the main reason to go with this product was the ability to create many automations, where we can improve our work and our process."
"The most valuable features are... those that enable me to represent the database to the development community and the business users."
"Has a specific template that's very helpful for importing metadata."
"The most valuable feature is the way you can extend it and customize it. With most modeling tools, you fit your modeling process to fit the tool. In PowerDesigner, you can make the tool fit the way you want to work."
"I've used the reverse engineering feature a lot. I can take a look at the structure of the database and what relationships it has."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models."
"It's a stable system. It never crashes."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a very fast reverse engineering process. It does a very expansive comparison."
"Very good repository features."
"It can automate many routine tasks and save human resources to focus on real problems."
"It has good end-to-end metamodel interrelationships."
"It is useful for creating build-outs and architecture views and for publishing reports and stuff like that for different programs."
"I would like to see better documentation/help for the Data Architect tool. Creation of tutorials would be nice, as there are some features which are not as clearly defined as they should be."
"The number of options can be overwhelming at times. That is not necessarily a bad thing but for a newbie, it can be daunting."
"I would like to upload, a database with about 3,000 tables. It takes so much time and, finally, it freezes the whole solution so that I actually cannot work with that environment. For the data warehouse, it's fine because I have 20 or 30 tables. It works fine. But, when I reverse-engineer the database with 3,000 tables, it freezes and it's hard to upload and reverse-engineer such environments in ER/Studio."
"The only thing I had an issue with was licensing, and the support was very good."
"Sometimes our version is a little unstable. But I think this problem occurs because our version is old."
"Whenever there is a new version, there are a lot of release notes on the technical side of it, but I would like to be told why are we doing the upgrade... What I would like to really see is how this benefits us from the business point of view. What are the real benefits that the user gets? I want some kind of way white paper. The release notes describe the technical enhancements but, from the layman's point of view, if someone asks me what are the business benefits of this upgrade, I don't have any documentation to explain it to the business."
"The model diagram because very clumsy when you save it on the team server and the models are very big."
"When building the relationships there should be a little more flexibility."
"You have the possibility to complete a connection for abbreviations if you are creating columns or names of the tables. In the Citrix environment, this has been lagging to the point where the PowerDesigner was not usable."
"The portal of SAP PowerDesigner could be better. The tool also needs more features and integration with other products, such as Collibra. It would be interesting for SAP PowerDesigner to have more integration."
"The solution itself does not need to be improved. However, they could add support for different languages."
"In terms of improvement, the pricing is a bit high."
"Not very intuitive or user-friendly."
"Technical support could be better and more human."
"Technical support needs improvement."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"They need to add reports that show the enterprise architecture perspectives, and the dashboards should be comfortable for the senior enterprise architects so that they can view the complete landscape."
"I don't use the tool or know a lot. It is going to have some shortcomings. When it comes down to publishing, we just found out this week that they actually have a publisher add-on. So, what we were trying to publish was not giving a detailed report about the architecture, views, etc. I just wish they had sent these to UNICOM and contacted them about add-on features for the publishing part of the tool."
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